Thorne
by Gingerhater5
Summary: Thorne (a pathfinder wizard) was living with Radagast to study magic thought lost to man since the sinking of Numenor and breed goats. After Radagast is killed and the life he knew taken from him, Thorne must decide what to do next.
1. Burial

The forest was dense, with tall, thick trees making up the bulk of scenery, along with the odd bush or sometimes a patch of grass. Light filtered through the leaves in a way that looked as if the forest floor was the sea floor. The familiar chirp of birds was gone, Thorne's goat was unusually calm, or maybe he was just being quiet for Thorne's sake. It stood taller than any other Goat Thorne had seen, in fact it stood taller than most horses. His horns curled and its fur was long and black. Normally the creature would be annoying Thorne or one of his neighbors. There was no one left for the goat to annoy. _At least they're free of him now._ Thorne thought, as he let out a short, bitter laugh. It was laugh, or cry.

Thorne, in one hand held a tall, sturdy, staff of Ironwood. So called for its strength and the difficulty of chopping and cutting it, such to the point of being known as "Ax Breaker" by Men and Dwarves. It was six foot tall and straight. The grain of the wood was clear through the smooth surface. Towards the top it formed into a carving of two bearded serpents, their long necks intertwined and their mouths grasping a perfect sphere of what looked like diamond. In the other, a shovel. It wasn't fancy but it got the job done, the smith who made it was skilled, but didn't care for making something that was to be stuck into the ground repeatedly look anything more than presentable.

The shovel made the familiar biting sound as it cut through the soft upper layer of the forest floor. Thorne brought it back up through the damp dirt and roots. It was caught on a smaller, but surprisingly strong root. The unexpected jerking caught him off guard and he lost concentration. In what seemed an instant the stench of death rushed in and filled Thorne's senses with the sour, bitter smell of sulfur and decay. Thorne fell to his knees, hacking and coughing, his breathing was slowly returning to a steady pace as he leaned on his staff for support. Through the gags and coughs Thorne raised his right hand and a faint blue light enveloped his hand as it turned to a fist. The incantation he cast was a simple one, but under the right circumstances it could be invaluable. It altered the strength and sensitivity of his senses, in this case: he numbed his sense of smell.

Thorne laid his staff down and grabbed the long, smooth handle of the shovel to resume digging. It wasn't clear exactly how long he had been digging for, but the sun was telling him it was just after mid-day. Thorne looked to the hole. It was long and rectangular closer to five feet long than six and as far as he could tell, four feet deep. Thorne walked forward and threw his shovel to the ground, he turned and knelt before a dead body, garbed in brown and holding a staff in his hands, which met at the midpoint of his chest. He was laid before a tree, its roots supporting the man's head. The elderly-seeming man had a peaceful look about him. His hair was splayed underneath his head, a good part of it was caked stiff with bird droppings. His hat was next to his head, slightly higher on the roots and on top of that was a bird's nest normally worn by this man under the furry hat. The eggs which it held were broken, the chicks semi-developed with still soft beaks. He passed his hands over the man's open eyes, closing them. A small rustling noise was heard by Thorne in the grass. A hedgehog crept forward, at first suspicious of Thorne but warming to him quickly as he recognized the man. Thorne extended his hand gently, taking the hedgehog in his palm and stroking its back. It looked at Thorne expectantly. "It's good to see you're okay Sebastian." Thorne said softly as he rubbed its cheeks.

Thorne place Sebastian on his shoulder, moved forward and put one arm under the old man's head and neck, the other under his knees and carried him to the grave he had prepared. Gingerly, as if the old wizard could still feel pain he was laid to rest. His eyes opened. Thorne jumped a bit at this but remembered that he died with his eyes open. The muscles in his face were pretty much stuck in that position or at the very least wanted to be. Thorne closed them again. They opened again. Thorne closed them. They opened. He closed them. They opened. Once again Thorne closed the eyes, this task was starting not only to grate on him, but felt like a cruel mockery of Thorne's grief. They opened.

Tired of what he could only feel was a game, Thorne grabbed the old man's hat and laid it over his eyes. Thorne rose to his feet and grabbed the shovel. Morosely and sluggishly he began moving the soil back into the hole. Seeing the man's body saddened Thorne. He felt numb, slow and on the verge of tears. He took a deep breath and focused on the movement of his tool. He didn't know or care how long it took to fill the grave.

Thorne let out a breath of relief and turned to his goat, Tulroc, and removed a plain wooden sign, which he then hammered in to the ground, at the head of the shallow grave. Thorne laid his palm against it and felt a bit of power flow down his arm and into the wood, leaving behind an arcane mark that read: "Radagast The Brown".


	2. What's Left

Thorne wasn't an overly large man, taller than most but shorter than others. He rode Tulroc over the rough and bumpy ground of The Mirkwood. This was something Thorne had done nearly every day for the last ten years, ever since the massive goat underneath him was large enough to ride. There was comfort in the familiarity of it all, for just a moment Thorne could pretend that everyone was back home, at Rhosgobel, and very much alive.

As he and his goat found a rough, familiar, and unkempt trail he let himself hope that any minute now he would hear something. Maybe it would be the rough grating of a saw on wood, maybe the loud banging of a hammer against the old anvil, or just someone arguing and shouting. He tried to tell himself that the smoke he smelled was from a forge, or a campfire. The underlying scent made this impossible and broke the hopeful delusion in an instant.

As he rounded one last bend in the trail he saw that nothing had changed. Rhosgobel was once a simple shack made of bits and pieces of other buildings. Now though, after a few more people arrived to the area, it was almost a village. There were a few houses, none of them looked good, but they did what homes were supposed to do. They were empty now, and likely to stay that way.

At the center of town was a small mass of burning bodies, twisted and grotesque with eyes far too large to belong to something living above ground. They were goblins, they were what killed everyone. They would've killed Thorne too, if not for sheer dumb-luck.

Thorne didn't know exactly how long ago it happened, but it had to be less than two days, or else he would have died of thirst. As far as he could tell, this was not the case. It was night when Thorne heard the shouting and excitement, he got to his feet as quickly as he could. But as he opened his door and called an obscuring mist to surround himself, something very large, very hard, and very fast hit him on the head. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was of course, a goblin. It was taller than the others, and while most of its kind had broad, stocky features, this one was vaguely rat-like. Its face was unusually elongated, its ears were short; two long and deformed teeth protruded from the front of its jaw.

He did not wake until after it was all over. Until he found Sebastian (the hedgehog) Thorne believed Tulroc to be the only survivor. When he next saw the goat it was tearing out the throat of one last goblin. It screamed and shrieked in fear, batting at the black beast's face, as Thorne looked away the screams were replaced with a shallow gurgle. When he looked back Tulroc was eating it.

Now what was left of that little thing and of everyone else was a horrible sight that Thorne didn't care to remember. He spent the next day and a half cleaning up, working through a sleepless night and by the time he was ready to bury everyone, they started to smell. Radagast was in the best condition all things considered, he had no wounds of any kind, Thorne had no Idea what killed him. Only parts of everyone else remained, just enough to tell who they were.

He had to leave. Thorne came to this realization while sitting in the ruins of his home, he wasn't on a chair, all of his furniture was gone, burned, or in splinters. _They did this just to spite me._ Thorne thought bleakley. For all he knew this was true, goblins ate people, horses, and even dogs. They stole gold and silver, but he had never heard of them taking entire beds and tables before. He sat for long hours, staring at nothing in particular, trying to decide what he needed to do next. _I must tell someone about this. But who?_ The question ate away at him. He knew the townsfolk well, but the subject of kin and relatives simply never came when they talked. He knew that Darren, Rhosgobel's blacksmith, had a sister in a place called Lake Town, which was very near a mountain. But in reality this told Thorne next to nothing, He knew of many lakes and mountains, both named and nameless.

Radagast didn't have family, conventional family anyway. None were connected to him by blood, but there was more to Radagast, to Aiwendil than mere flesh and blood. Radagast was one of five, the Istari, the wizards of the west. Thorne supposed that they were kin of a sort to Radagast. He had to tell them. There was a small comfort in that, having something to do. Thorne was in a bad place, but now he had somewhere to go and something to do.

He never saw Sebastian again.


	3. Depature

Thorne gathered what he needed for the journey. It wasn't much upon reflection. He was only one man, and Tulroc could eat almost anything and be fine. Thorne put all of the food that was left into a large canvas sack that tied to Tulroc's saddle. Goblins had taken everything else. The goat grunted, more out of surprise at the sudden weight, at its odd angle, than anything.

He changed his clothes, everything he was wearing for the past few days went onto a fire. It hurt more than it should have, like he was leaving something behind. It had to be done. He had been in contact with the dead, there were people, elves rather, where he was going and the dead spread disease swiftly. _Can elves get sick?_ He couldn't quite recall. It was best not to risk such matters.

Now though, he wore robes of a grey-green color, a hood made of a light brown cloth, and simple leather boots. A spell-book hung at his side in a leather satchel, a blue ring adorned the index finger of his left hand. It was a magic ring, one he made, and most of the time it was entirely useless, because he could swim. Thorne wore it because he liked the way it looked, and it gave him a certain pride, being something he made. As the sun was getting low, he mounted Tulroc and left, staff in hand, without looking back.

His destination was Rivendell. It was home to him for most of his childhood and a large portion of his adult life; it was the only place he could go. If they weren't there when he arrived, Gandalf the Grey and Saruman the White would either find their way later, or someone would be able to point Thorne in the direction of one of the two. Alatar and Pallando however, were just gone. The two blue wizards went off to the far east, and never came back.

Thorne traveled for almost another two days straight, he was afraid to sleep, he didn't want the dreams the previous days would bring. Exhaustion caught up to Thorne, he fell from the saddle and struck his head against a rock.

He woke up hours later, at night, in a cave across from Tulroc, with something sticky and wet running down his forehead and into his eyes. Thorne felt the wet spot and his hand came away red.

"Did you bring me here then?" he asked the goat. Tulroc was curled into himself, in response he looked to Thorne with shining green eyes and his stumpy little tail waged vigorously.

Though the floor of the cave was hard, Thorne didn't want to move; it wasn't long before sleep took him again, deep and dreamless, it was the rest of the truly exhausted. As morning came, Thorne stretched, sat up straight, and with his legs crossed, opened the book he had strapped to him. It wasn't damaged in the fall, in truth there were few things that could damage it. There were only eighteen actual words, there were only eighteen spells simple enough for normal words: Cantrips. He skipped over those, Thorne had long since memorized them in their entirety. Everything else Thorne had written however, were odd mishmashes of symbols and shapes, they could not be expressed through conventional language. It was a method of directing and empowering the magic found in the world, one Thorne pieced together from the few surviving records of Númenor, the homeland of his forebears. The method was taxing and imperfect, consequence of this being Thorne could only commit a few of them to memory, having to start again every other day. It became easier with time. After about an hour of reading and memorization, Thorne rose up and moved on after once again mounting Tulroc.

It took less than week for Thorne to make his way through Mirkwood and over the Misty Mountains. A single person moves far quicker than a group, and Tulroc's hooves were made for climbing mountains. Where everyone on horseback or on foot had to take a path carved into the stone, Tulroc and by extension Thorne, could more or less travel in a straight line.

The sight of Rivendell was a relief to Thorne beyond words. It was hidden in a valley, with waterfalls and rivers on either side; the smell of pine rose upon the wind. There was even something in the wind itself that made Thorne feel better than he had in days, at first that is. It was a low hum, one that felt as though it rolled over him, head to toe. The sun was setting as he approach the city itself. There weren't many guards, there didn't need to be. There were two men that Thorne saw. One with a bow, one with a spear, both in armor that shone in the dimming light of the sun. They heard Tulroc and Thorne approach, and rose to meet them. The hum reached Thorne's head and left the sensation of something being wrong, broken inside him; it was difficult to remember why he had come.

"We bid you welcome to Imladris," said the one with the spear, on reflex it would seem, before a look of recognition crossed his features, though Thorne couldn't say why.

"What brings... you..." The one with the bow tried to ask, but as he trailed off, Thorne realized he never actually washed the blood from his face, nor had he tended to the wound that bled in the first place.

"My apologies, I must look like a mess, I am the Green Thorne," Thorne said, "I bring dire news of...somewhere...and must speak with the master of your house." Thorne paused a moment, "Or Gandalf, if he's here." They looked at him strangely and Thorne felt a pain in his head as the hum once again passed him over.


	4. Chapter 4

"We know who you are Thorne." One of them said.

"Oh, good!," Thorne replied, "Lead way!" he said almost drunkenly.

The bow-elf, lean and dark of hair; fair of face, like most if not all elves, motioned Thorne along. Thorne suddenly noticed the bobbing of Tulroc's saddle a bit more, he felt unsteady. Hooves clicked on the white stone of their current path. The elf noticed this, "How old is the wound on your head?" he asked.

Thorne responded: "What day is it?" Thorne thought a moment, "It's an old (if unclean) wound, if something bad was going to happen it would have." There was a tickle at the back of Thorne's mind, it was almost painful, and the hum passed over him again, "Have we met before? I feel as though I should know you."

They stopped, "You don't remember me?" the elf asked, "Do you remember the name of my father, the one who raised you, the master of this house?"

"Should I?" Thorne replied.

"You just said that yourself!" The elven man, his name started with an _r_ , Thorne was sure of it, had a rather severe look of worry on his face.

Thorne heard music then, coming from below and behind him, he turned Tulroc around and tried to follow, he was unable to find it and ended up walking the goat in circles. Abruptly, (Rutherford, that was his name! Thorne was certain!), took Tulroc's reins and lead the two somewhere, there were beds and the air felt warm. At some point Thorne had dismounted and was being supported someone, he didn't see who, it felt like he couldn't lift his head.

Thorne flopped bonelessly onto a chair someone set him on. The next moment were fuzzy to Thorne, but he distinctly remembered the abrupt removal of his hood, someone making a gasping sound and someone else asking if they should take his ring, calling it dangerous; he lifted his head and saw an older looking elf, one he recognized, the one he had come to see. "I...you..." Thorne tried to say something, there was something he needed to say, something of grave importance.

Thorne let his head flop back down, and heard someone, the older elf, say: "I think that would explain his memory. "

Once again Thorne lost time. Hours or days, he didn't know. "A disturbing trend" Thorne said, he thought it remained a quiet thought, he was wrong.

"Oh?" Came a voice, Elladan, the elf with the bow. He sat in a white chair, made of wood or stone, across the room from a bed Thorne didn't remember laying down in. Thorne's hood was gone, on a little table next to the head of the bed.

"The past days have not been kind to me, Rutherford." He said quietly, there was a pain in Thorne's voice that even Thorne himself heard. "I mean Elladan." Thorne corrected himself.

Elladan tried not to grin at Thorne's slip of the tongue, he changed the subject, "I see you were successful in breeding goats big enough to ride.", a pause, "I have to admit, I didn't think you'd manage that."

Thorne smiled to himself, "It was more difficult than I had anticipated at first, but I enlarged each generation by half a foot in size, the method was meant to affect people. The challenge came from adapting it and making it permanent. There was also the problem of rapid aging, I believe I've fixed that part."

"It worked well from what I could see." Elladan said, "He likes Elrohir well enough."

"How is your brother anyhow?" Thorne hadn't seen either of the two since leaving and he rarely saw them apart. It was then that Thorne noticed his ring was gone from its place, "Why did you take my ring?" a tension filled the air.

Another voice spoke and Thorne saw Elrond, master of Rivendell, father of Arwen, Elladan and Elrohir, foster father of Thorne and Estel, "Where did you get it? I will know should you lie to me, such things are dangerous." his voice was hard.

"I made it." Thorne said, sitting up. Elrond looked him dead in the eyes and what was a mix of worry and anger shifted almost on the instant to one of surprise; of pride.

"Truly?" Elrond asked, Thorne nodded, "That is not a feat many could replicate, even when the world was younger. What does it do?"

"It prevents the wearer from sinking beneath the surface of water." Thorne replied, after a brief silence he asked: "What happened to me?'

"A place in you," Elrond began, " In your head, I'd say, was damaged. It was the part of your mind you've changed in order to use magic, that alteration made it fragile in some ways, stronger in others. Imladris tried to mend it for you."

There was a gentle breeze flowing through the place they were in, almost in response to the mention of Rivendell's elven name, the hum was gone, replaced by a single note. There was warmth to it, some sort of alien benevolence. "From what I can recall," Thorne said, ", that isn't quite what happened."

The wind died down, the note soured and died. "No, it isn't. Imladris doesn't know you as you are now. It would have succeeded eventually, but it was fumbling around in your mind, in your being; you may have forgotten yourself entirely had I not intervened." Elrond explained.

"Could this happen again?" Thorne asked, sitting up. The quiet note returned, gentler this time, almost timid.

"Not here, it knows that part of you now." Elrond sounded relieved. Silence hung heavy in the air, aside from that one note, which seemed as though it wouldn't leave Thorne. Something about that note felt good and yet it hurt, like something broken being forced into place.

It felt like ages before someone finally spoke, Thorne tried to meet either of their eyes, "It..." he tried to speak, but his voice caught in his throat and he looked down. The warmth on the wind returned; he found himself steady in a way he had not felt recently and able to meet the gaze of Elrond, "Radagast the Brown is dead. As is everyone else that was at Rhosgobel, it was goblins. I would've been killed if not for fog and dumb-luck." The steadiness he felt was wavering and Thorne's voice grew dark.

For long moments, no one spoke, they barely moved; scarcely breathed. "Dead?" Elladan asked, no small amount of shock and fear evident in his voice, "One of the Istari?"

"Are you certain of this, of Radagast?" There was a tension in Elrond's own voice, contained but evident.

"He left a body, like all the others," said Thorne, "But there were no wounds, no cuts, bruises, nor broken bones. It was as if the life was removed from his form in an instant."

Elladan and Elrond exchanged glances, "What do you make of it?" he asked the two. There were more footsteps, and surprise of surprises another elf walked in, she didn't stay long, only to leave a silver tray with steaming cups of what had to be tea and a pitcher of water that seemed to be so cold frost was perpetually gathering upon it.

She turned to face them, gave a slight bow and tried to leave, before she could Elrond spoke, "Thorne, this is-" Thorne didn't get her name, he was too distracted by the absolutely horrified expression she carried, and that single note caught repeating upon the air.

With what seemed like no warning she turned and managed to leave, "What's wrong with my face?" Thorne asked abruptly.

It caught both father and son off-guard. "Nev réd," Elrond turned to Thorne, _That can't be good._ Throne thought. Elrond had just called him "Near Son" if Thorne remembered the language correctly, the two were close, but Elrond didn't use language such as this with Thorne unless he was going to tell him something very good, or very bad. Becoming an orphan and learning his ancestry came to mind, as did finding ways to use magic, as well as getting his first goat.

"There is no easy way to say this, you did not escape so cleanly as you seem to think, in fact, you may not have escaped at all, and in that I may know what, or rather who killed Radagast," he said as he handed Thorne a mirror, reflective side down. Thorne grasped the handle of blue-white wood with an iron grip, the knuckles of his hand turning white, pink, and white again as he worked his grasp in an effort to calm himself.

The mirror turned and it was almost immediately clear who killed Radagast The Brown. It was Radagast The Brown.

There was a long scar running down Thorne's face, it started at the back of his head from what he could tell. It came up and over his brow and his face, traveling down and leaving an angry path of flesh still red with unspilled blood. The eye the scar crossed was milky-white with damage. His left ear was missing entirely. "Radagast The Brown killed Radagast the brown." The ear was cosmetic he supposed, but the scar could only come from a wound that should have vertically bisected his head entirely.

"He gave himself up so that you could live," Elrond said quietly.


End file.
